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Monthly Archives: October 2007

Why wait for a boring FCC meeting that no one will watch to announce a
major policy, when you can talk to a New York Times reporter instead? Days
before the official FCC meeting at which the issue will be discussed,
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has just told the newspaper that his agency
is ready to strike down the exclusive contracts
that cable operators have signed with apartment managers and homeowners’
associations across the country.

Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to
investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling
communications over the Internet and on cell phones.

Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the incidents
involving several companies, including
Comcast Corp.,
Verizon
Wireless
and
AT&T Inc., have raised serious concerns over the companies'”power
to discriminate against content.”

They want the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to
investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business
policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal
regulation is needed.

Verizon is starting to sell sort of fast symmetrical access,
that is, 20Mbps in both directions.
The price is $64.99/month, which is only about twice what you pay
in Japan for more than twice the bandwidth.
Also only in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.

Many FTTH providers also cap their symmetrical service, and whether the
20/20 tier would be capped was the first question fired at Verizon on
the conference call.

“We don’t impose caps upon our subscribers,” insisted Susan Retta, Vice
President of broadband solutions for Verizon. “We expect customers who
order this 20/20 service will want to use it frequently, and we intend
to give them the bandwidth that they ordered and they expect.”

I’m always complaining about the telephone companies, so this item is
refreshing:

When George Linardos was ordered to clear his diary to help dream up new
business for Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile , Research), he imagined six
weeks brainstorming on the terrace of a five-star hotel in the Caribbean.

What he got was a pot of porridge every morning at a Spartan hotel hours
from Finnish capital Helsinki, with forests and snow all around.

Seeing the same half a dozen faces for 45 days and craving greater social
interaction, Linardos and his team came up with a site aimed at making
informal networking easier, especially for people without access to a PC.

The result, Mosh (http://mosh.nokia.com/), a social networking site that
is accessible from mobile phones, is the latest piece in the puzzle for
Nokia as it tries to build an Internet stronghold to balance a maturing
cellphone business.

Not only invented something, but something the inventor personally wants
to use!
This is the way Unix got invented, and Linux, by that other Finn,
Linus Torvalds.
I don’t know how successful Mosh will be, but that’s not the point,
no more than how well a talking dog talks.
And it’s also beside the point that the invention simply crosses
two existing ideas: mobile phones and social networking web sites.
Many inventions are like that.
A telephone company invented something!

Former Qwest CEO Joseph P. Nacchio, who has been convicted of insider
trading for selling stock while Qwest’s stock price was tanking,
claims he had reason to believe Qwest would get lucrative government
contracts, and that Qwest was denied them because he refused
to participate in an illegal program.
When this happened is very interesting:

The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the
National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered
illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly
unsealed court filings.

Today, the presidents of
NARAL Pro-Choice America and the
Christian Coalition
co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling on Congress to
address the censorship policies of phone companies like Verizon and
AT&T. Last month, Verizon arbitrarily banned text messages from NARAL,
deeming the lawful political speech too “controversial and unsavory”
to send.

“We are on opposite sides of almost every issue,” wrote NARAL President
Nancy Keenan and Christian Coalition President Roberta Combs. “But
when it comes to the fundamental right of citizens to participate in
the political process, we’re united — and very worried. Whatever your
political views — conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat,
pro-choice or pro-life — it shouldn’t be up to Verizon to determine
whether you receive the information you requested.”

Such activity apparently includes moving large files, which is ironic
for users who have paid for unlimited access. Perhaps more than ironic;
I wonder if anybody has tried suing yet.

Well, I don’t know about Comcast, but somebody has tried suing Verizon,
and won:

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that Verizon Wireless
has agreed to halt the deceptive marketing of its internet usage plans
and reimburse $1 million to customers for wrongful account termination
nationwide.

The settlement follows a nine-month investigation into the marketing
of NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess plans for wireless access to the
internet for laptop computer users. Attorney General’s investigation
found that Verizon Wireless prominently marketed these plans as
“’Unlimited,” without disclosing that common usages such as
downloading movies or playing games online were prohibited. The company
also cut off heavy internet users for exceeding an undisclosed cap of
usage per month. As a result, customers misled by the company’s claims,
enrolled in its Unlimited plans, only to have their accounts abruptly
terminated for excessive use, leaving them without internet services
and unable to obtain refunds.

And Cuomo goes out of his way to say he wants this to affect
not just Verizon:

“This settlement sends a message to companies large and small answering the growing consumer demand for wireless services. When consumers are promised an ‘unlimited’ service, they do not expect the promise to be broken by hidden limitations,” said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. “Consumers must be treated fairly and honestly. Delivering a product is simply not enough – the promises must be delivered
as well.”

The EFF found that not just Gnutella—another file sharing app—was
being blocked, but Lotus Notes, an app businesses use to share calendars,
emails and files over the net had its traffic interfered with as
well. It’s fine to piss off a bunch of file sharers, but when Comcast
starts making sure that a CTO can’t get the files off his work machine,
that’s a different story altogether. Net Neutrality, we need you!

Meanwhile, over in Japan, everybody from the national and local governments
to broadband providers to application writers to Internet participants
are concentrating on fast speeds, ubiquitous use, and new applications,
not to mention international competitiveness.

More impressive than raw numbers is the graph, which
shows aDSL growing rapidly from 2001 to 2003, after which
FTTH suddenly becomes the new growth broadband connection.

As of March 2007, merely 95% of all Japanese households had broadband,
and 84% had ultra-highspeed broadband.
Japanese government goals for 2010 are 100% and 90%, respectively.
Ultra-highspeed seems to be defined as both up and down over 30Mbps.

Until now, FTTH has been the mainstream in terms of ultra-highspeed
broadband, with upload and download speeds of over 30Mbps, but other wired
and wireless technologies are aiming for technologies that will match
if not overtake FTTH, and there will be a need for ongoing developments
in broadband technology in terms of higher speed and larger volume to
meet user needs.

Major AT&T recipients include Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV who is a big supporter of
retroactive immunity for telco spying, and who recently (spring 2007,
just as the telcos started pushing for that immunity)
got a big spike in Verizon employee contributions, as well.